Elizabeth Holmes Texas Prison Offers Inmates Business Classes

• Elizabeth Holmes will be staying at the same prison camp as Real Housewives star Jen Shah
• The Texas women’s prison offers business skill classes to all inmates.
• Both Holmes and Shah have been convicted of fraud relating to their business practices.

Elizabeth Holmes is set to begin her 11-year sentence for fraud related to her failed blood-testing business at a prison camp in Texas that, ironically, offers business classes to inmates, according to an inmate orientation handbook. 

Holmes was convicted in November 2022 of three charges of wire fraud and one conspiracy to commit wire fraud charge after a jury found she defrauded investors in her health tech company Theranos. On Tuesday a judge denied Holmes’s request to stay out of prison while she appealed her conviction.

She was later assigned to serve out her sentence at the Federal Prison Camp, a women’s prison in Bryan, Texas for those convicted of white-collar crimes, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

It’s the same prison where Jen Shah, one of the stars of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” is three months into her 6 ½ year sentence after being found guilty on a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a telemarketing scam that targeted elderly victims.

According to the prison’s handbook, all inmates are required to hold a job for a minimum of 90 days. The inmates are given opportunities to take tests that determine if they are particularly skilled in fields like business or clerical work.

Based on those skills, prison leadership then assigns the inmates jobs at a factory, where they make cents an hour to hone those skills. These inmates will have to shadow a more experienced worker to learn how to operate machinery or complete data entry assignments.

However, the handbook states that inmates — including the former billionaire businesswoman — cannot start or conduct their own business while at the Federal Prison Camp. 

Holmes will also spend her time in prison making her bed at early hours, enduring multiple headcounts a day, keeping her cell clean by mopping the floors, taking out the trash, and facing random shakedowns for contraband. Her timetable will be strictly controlled, and she will only be allowed to move about the prison at certain times.

It’s not all bad though: the prison offers wellness classes, arts and crafts, and leisure programs.

Criminal defense lawyer Alan Ellis told Bloomberg in November that, compared to other prisons FPC Bryan was “heaven.”

“If you have to go it’s a good place to go,” Ellis told Bloomberg.

A lawyer for Holmes and representatives for Shah did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.